Rowan leaves glowing in the sunlight

In a mini-arboretum and mini-geology exhibit on UWO campus.

Lone tree

A single tree out on a UWO lawn.

Sunset over UWO

The sun sets on the first sunny-ish day I had in London — this particular set of glowing clouds showed up when I was waiting for the bus back to my hotel.

The moon in a tree

Another view of the gorgeous leaf peeping to be done in London this week — this tree shows up on the route I walked to campus, and it was easy enough to align the moon with the tree once I spotted both of them.

Mathematics, University of Western Ontario

One of the classier buildings I've visited — the Mathematics department at Western resides in Middlesex College on the central campus, a gorgeous building built in the style of the old OxBridge campuses, albeit in the 60's.

With the blazing colours all over I have realized that the “leaf peeping” that President Bartlett was making so much fun of in the episode with the failed radio adress is a real thing: it's the hobby of tracking and spotting impressive fall foliage colorations. And Ontario brings the peeping big time.

Fall colours and a connection

I shot this looking for the bright red vine covered building — only when I reviewed my haul from the day did I discover the poses of the two people in the picture, and the energy they bring to the composition.

Serendipity is thy name.

Palo Alto Sunset

The sunset over Palo Alto glows in the clouds over the bus terminal.

Golden Gate disappears in the fog

Just driven over the Golden Gate Bridge as the fog creeps down from above, slowly enveloping everything in a peasoup thickness that swallows up the city from the ocean and inward.

Coit Tower in its evening lighting. The red light makes the tower light up as a lantern, visible all over the city.

Sunset lighting up the clouds over San Francisco. Photo taken from just outside Coit Tower.

Wine press at Cline

Found at Cline Wineyard in Sonoma while visiting with my parents. A rustic charm that just went straight for the heart.

Shadow and light

Look! Look! That's me!

As the runners in Nike's Women's Marathon wait for the race to start, many of them flock to the wall of Niketown, where all the runners names are listed.

Light poi

Walking home from Fisherman's Wharf along the piers, we ran into a group of kids with LED poi and juggle sticks of various kinds. The unexpected and unpretentious show we got in passing was deeply and warmly welcome.

Sunset in Berkeley

Walking down Bancroft from Telegraph to the BART station, me and my parents walk into the setting sun.

Struck by the play of colours in the sky, there really is nothing else to do but to stop, aim, and shoot.

Blue Angels diving

And a last photo from the Blue Angels airshow. This one is actually a short while before the photo I displayed first; after this, the flyers split up in all directions to curve back in on the city afterwards.

Blue Angels in airshow

Another photo from the Blue Angels airshow I watched from my rooftop. I used a much too slow shutter speed — with the kind of sunlight we were having, I should've been able to use 1/500 or 1/750; but settled on 1/250 for all my photos. As a result, many of my closeups had a LOT of motion blur. This is one of the sharpest I got.

Airplane crossing the sunset.

Airplane passing over Sutro Tower in the sunset. I saw this out my window, and ran up on the roof with my camera to catch the airplane's trail before it had gone too far.

Sunset over the Tenderloin

With the sunset came a gorgeous shading of the sky out over Oakland and Milpitas, beyond the Bay. View from my rooftop.

Golden Gate by night

Going out to catch stars and try astrophotography, I ended up shooting a whole sequence of various exposures, tripod mounted, of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is the reasonably natural whitebalanced HDR composite I generated.

Golden Gate, all fuzzy

From the same source pictures as yesterday, here's the Golden Gate bridge again — but aggressively tone mapped to provoke a fuzzy picture, with strong red accents.

Blue Angels curving in on San Francisco

This weekend is Fleet Week in San Francisco — lots of ships, lots of navy lads walking through the city in full on uniform, and quite a number of shows. Saturday had a large air show, which culminated in the navy's Blue Angels showing up and off.

Once I realized I wouldn't be able to watch my movie until AFTER the show, I gave up, grabbed my camera, found my rooftop exit (I have one! I was completely unaware) and took a few photos of the show. This is one of them — postprocessed in Photoshop to adjust the tonal curve and (more importantly), adjusted the perspective errors introduced by the wide angle lens.

Sara Kališnik at the Renaissance Faire

At the end of the Faire, Sara had a most gorgeous hairdo done for her; and the sunlight was getting a really beautiful colour as well. What else to do, but a few close up shots to highlight the hair?

Postprocessing includes desaturating the background, to compensate for the busy environment drawing attention away from her hair.

Sara Kališnik at the Renaissance Faire

At the Renaissance Faire last weekend, our guest from Slovenia regally progressed in a borrowed gown, looking splendid.

I couldn't avoid making a couple of portrait shots — both because of the gown, and because of the gorgeous colour of her hair. This is the first one.

A Palo Alto sunset

My new phone is a SonyEricsson CyberShot — a camera phone with aspirations to the big league.

Recently, going home from campus, this glorious sunset materialized — and the only camera with me that wasn't completely drained of batteries was … my camera phone. And this, after a little bit of postprocessing, was the result.

HDR: A Stanford Sunset

As the sun sets over Stanford Campus, I stand ready with my camera. Bracketed shot, HDR processed, and a colourful view of the Stanford chapel emerges.

HDR: A SOMA rooftop

The view over a rooftop from one warehouse collective to the next warehouse. -2/0/+2 bracketed, HDR merged, and aggressively tone mapped.

HDR: A study in Strega, part 2

As for the second Strega shot, more texture and less bright flaring light, and with the colour of the Strega tinting the nearby candle.

And with a red apple (or is it a tomato?) hanging in the background as a contrast element.

HDR: A study in Strega

Some experiments with HDR: on a rooftop, at a SOMA warehouse housing collective, drinking Strega with good friends, I started shooting bracketed shots of my drink, in order to see what I could do with them.

Over the next few days, some of these results.

First out, a glass of Strega tinting and spreading the light coming through it.

Folsom Street Fair: Knotwork

I told you about the Folsom Street Fair last Thursday. But there are more pictures I want to show off.

Sometimes you see knotwork so intricate, well balanced, well tied, that you just have to stop for a moment and admire it.

Sometimes this knotwork is draped over a mostly naked man.

Folsom Street Fair: Poi

I told you about the Folsom Street Fair yesterday, but I have more photos I want to show off from the event. Many of the booths were selling whips in various sizes and properties. Thus, many people took the chance to do the obvious thing when offered a huge selection of whips: poi twirling!